An occasional update on items from Motordom – the world of auto dominance.
THE GREAT CRAWL
The Economist explains why the epic traffic jam in Beijing was inevitable. But here it is in a handy chart:
As of 2006, the increase in the number of private vehicles overtook the increase in the number of kilometres of express highways contstructed. One can bet that the Motordom lobby is using that to argue for more express-highway construction. “We have to catch up!”
___________________________________________________
FAST MOTION IN TOKYO
I love these videos, the children of Koyaanisqatsi.
___________________________________________________
OBITUARIES IN AUSTRALIA
Having watched the Clem7 Tunnel under Brisbane from the day it opened, I’ve been expecting this one. From the Sydney Morning Herald:
Private investor funding of Australian toll roads is all but dead: the game is up. We thought the bankers and builders would cream off fees, but we never knew that the traffic forecasts were baloney. Funnily enough, when you read ‘expert opinions’ from consultants about how many cars will come down a road in the near future, you expect it to be correct.
The final insult to a legion of mum-and-dad investors came a few days ago when RiverCity – a Brisbane toll road company – lobbed an appalling set of results. RiverCity followed Melbourne’s EastLink, Sydney’s Lane Cove and a long line of once-lauded ‘infrastructure projects’ down the road to perdition.
Clem7 Tunnel – there were $1 billion in losses, surprise bonuses for senior management, and a debt problem that would have any banker losing sleep. But another factor finally seized much-needed attention … grossly optimistic traffic projections.
We’ve been here before. Melbourne’s ConnectEast, the listed company behind the EastLink project, blazed a trail. The EastLink road that runs from Ringwood to Frankston opened in 2008 with a projection of 256,000 vehicles a month (after 15 months), but here we are long after that deadline and the average daily count is 178,000. …
IMF, the premier funder of classaction claims in Australia, is building a file. As the managing director of IMF, Hugh McLernon, explains:
‘There is no exception in the law to false and misleading information’. Remarkably, legal action over traffic forecasts is unprecedented in Australian law courts … but that may not be the case for much longer.”
